AB Original Is Fucking Good Business

The musical nostalgia recycling cycle is still seems to be working on its 20-years-or-so clock. Some are still sweating into their flannos, yet to realise Cobain is still dead, while others are rifling through the Britpop racks, equally oblivious to the fact the currently-visiting Noel Gallagher is still doing it better than most of them. While mightily taking the piss and having a helluva laugh about it at the same time. If you’ve got to have a dig around rock’s back pages, there are other places from which to steal, er,“appropriate influences”.

Oh, you want retro? How about 400 years retro. It’s the quadri-centenary of William Shakespeare shuffling off this mortal coil - that’s one of his, isn’t it? – so many reckon this is a good reason to pay some sort of tribute. Our own Paul Kelly has one in the works, but on a grander scale Rufus Wainwright has constructed one too, with some handy friends/guests to mouth the words. First hint of that has Florence Welch (sans Machine) – who’d make a fine Elizabethan heroine in her own right – having a run at Bill’s Sonnet 29. That’s the When In Disgrace With Fortune And Men’s Eyes one, as if you didn’t know. Flo warbles with all the expected beauty, Ruf joins in, and we all feel like we’ve learnt something cultural, while being entertained. 

Closer to home, let’s go 40,000 years retro or so. And a culture crushed, but still alive enough to be want to be heard. Briggs is becoming an important indigenous voice, possibly partly due to the fact he’s able to make an audience laugh and listen. Combining with Hilltop Hoods/Seth Sentry producer Trials, they bill themselves AB Original (geddit?) and confess to taking some cues from the Public Enemy school of pointing the finger. 2 Black 2 Strong (Golden Era/Bad Apples) comes at you, takes well-aimed swipes at the Kardashians and Gina Rinehart among others – and there’s a couple of references you wouldn’t usually think of putting in the same rant – and makes its point. It’s fucking good business, allowing I’m just a middle-aged white man with an opinion.  

Having recognised/revived/resuscitated and/or resurrected a range of voices from the turn of last century through to ‘50s and ‘60s icons such as Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson, musical archivist and true fan Jack White decides he’s up to around the cusp of the ‘70s into ‘80s for one of his label’s offerings for this year’s Record Store Day. If unaware, Kate Pierson is that small woman with the huge yowl from The B-52s, and the song is the Venus (Third Man Records) that’s been a hit a few times already. This version has Jack’s fingerprints well in evidence, it coming with a bit of a twang to it, and being done with obvious sincerity, affection, and skill.

Oh, you want voices? Well, let Case/Lang/Veirs take some of the traditions of the Parton/Harris/Ronstadt Trio of times past, update in a manner that some will have to call alt-country or Americana – allowing at least one of them is Canadian. Best Kept Secret (Anti-) is a truly fine thing with Neko, K.D., and Laura – if I’m not being too familiar there – presenting something that while has lovely things like strings to make it pretty, it doesn’t fall into being lush just for the sake of it. If middle of the road, said road is at least a dusty and woody back-country lane through the Pacific Northwest. 

Another middle-aged white man with an opinion is potential national living monument, Dave Graney and current combo guise, The MistLY. He’s also seen his share of those back roads and bad gigs, and This Is The Deadest Place I’ve Ever Died In (Cockaigne) proof that he can still find new ways to describe the experience. Variously, this is explained as ‘a modern blues groove’ and ‘a punk-funk stomper’. These are surprisingly accurate appraisals. Funky. Yeah. Dave’s schtick may still weigh a ton, but he carries it stylishly.

There’s a certainly timelessness to young fellas brought up on old Dylan records. And a certain old school romanticism to the same young fellas who give their favourite guitar a name, and then write a song about it. Kevin Morby fits all the above, and even goes so far as taking the name of Dorothy (Dead Oceans) from his nanna. Nawwww. Morby used to front the kinda psychedelic Woods, but this is from out in the Zimmerman middle of America – although more of the Kansas flatlands of now, than Bob’s post-war Minnesota. 

Another mixing of eras and styles, with added special guest personality, Psychic Ills’ I Don’t Mind (Sacred Bones). Tres Warren and Elizabeth Hart put big, rolling, er, ‘psyche’ organ down, and then add the equally classic high plain pedal steel wending around and through it. It’s an apparently odd juxtaposition that works surprisingly well. Oh, then there’s the extra bit of magic and atmosphere by having Mazzy Starr’s Hope Sandoval add her gauzy tones over all of the above to make something that’s absolutely intriguing, at the least.  

There’s a bittersweet modern melancholy to those waves from the observation deck as you watch the Airbus back away from the terminal, when you have no real idea of which window you even should be waving to. This is Airport Love (123) writ large, and Jenny Broke The Window seem to know what it’s like to bid farewell to the smell of jet fuel burning away. The synths and guitars mix together, but leave some space in the terminal over by the baggage carousel, with Tony Buchen (Preatures, Andy Bull) adding the pop polish in the production that might get them more notice.